The invention relates to an insulation displacement contact of electrically conducting sheet material, for insulation displacement contacting of an insulated electrical conductor, comprising two sheet parts, each sheet part having formed in it a slit with a slit opening which opens out in an edge of the sheet part, in order to receive the electrical conductor, and the sheet parts being disposed with surfaces facing each other and slit openings accessible from the same side.
An insulation displacement contact of this type is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,547,034. The two sheet parts are formed by the folded-over halves of a single sheet, while a recess extends in line with the fold line in order to facilitate folding. A similar embodiment of an insulation displacement contact is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,824,527, but in this case there is no recess on the fold line.
Due to the fact that these insulation displacement contacts contact a conductor at two different places, and as a result of the sheet parts being arranged with the surfaces facing each other in the form of a V, an electrically reliable and mechanically tension-resistant connection to a conductor to be contacted is obtained.
In view of the current efforts towards miniaturisation of electronic components, on the one hand, in order to produce as small equipment as possible for building in and, on the other, to accommodate as many parts as possible in equipment of given dimensions, for example in order to increase the number of functions of the equipment concerned, there is an increasing need for connectors of reduced dimensions and/or connectors with the highest possible number of contact elements without their dimensions being inadmissibly increased. As the length of connectors increases, there is in fact a risk of the printed circuit board or the substrate on which they are mounted becoming warped, the result of which is an increased risk of circuit or substrate breakages. Consequently, there is a need for insulation displacement contacts for use in such connectors.
The known insulation displacement contacts are highly unsuitable for this purpose, on account of their relatively sturdy structure in order to make them sufficiently rigid to be able to withstand bending and twisting forces during contacting of an electrical conductor. Due to the fact that the sheet parts are connected to each other at their fold line, these known contacts are also less suitable for accommodating tolerances in the positioning of the insulation displacement contact relative to the conductor to be contacted, for example a conductor of a ribbon cable.